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Dessert

A Rich Wedding Cake

A rich cake made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, brandy, rose-water, currants, raisins, citron, and spices, baked for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

A Rich Wedding Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and flour

  1. Wash and clean the currants a day in advance, then dry them with a coarse napkin and spread them on a dish.

  2. Stone the raisins and cut them in halves.

  3. Sprinkle the currants and raisins with flour.

  4. Sift the flour.

  5. If using brown sugar, dry and roll it; if white sugar, crush and sieve it.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the brandy and rose-water in a cup, adding the finely pounded spices.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light.

  3. Beat the eggs and stir them into the butter and sugar.

  4. Gradually add part of the flour, then stir in the spices and liquor mixture.

  5. Add the remaining flour and the currants and raisins alternately.

  6. Stir the mixture for a few minutes.

Bake

  1. Butter a large tin pan and line the bottom and sides with buttered white paper.

  2. Layer the cake mixture in the pan, adding strips of citron between layers until all is used.

  3. Bake for 4 to 5 hours.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Brandy + curranttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Currant + macetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,791 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the heavy fruit and batter together as the cake sets.
Sugar
Creaming with butter adds lightness and sweetness and helps browning.
Currants
Add concentrated fruit flavour and moisture throughout the dense cake.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour and helps keep the cake moist.

The step that matters

Layering the batter with citron. Heavy fruit and batter can sink or settle unevenly, so layering spreads the citron and fruit through the cake rather than letting it all fall to the bottom.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, egg, brandy, currant, raisin):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, egg, brandy, currant, raisin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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